Artists

United Kingdom

Christine Bruce
Together Apart: #Shelter

19.08.20 09.09.20

Christine is largely self-taught and has been developing her art practice for the past 10 years as a part-time student with the Open College of the Arts in UK, working towards a Bachelor in Creative Arts.
She is developing her practice as a printmaker, exploring the possibilities of expanded print media and 3-dimensional objects in response to the phenomena of loss and remembrance.

CHRISTINE ABOUT TOGETHER APART: #SHELTER
My responses to this revolve around my shelter being a place with boundaries, a territory, a plot that can be marked out. This may be an emotional space or state, but in terms of Covid, this is phenomenological, not conceptual. Materiality, albeit on a nanoscale, cannot be denied.
So, my thought processes are very much with materials and barriers. Obviously this does chime with the work I’ve been doing on poetic, performative spaces: and it just so happens that the space I’m in is the one that inspired much of the previous work: it is a space for performance of memory, and particularly this year, when people who might be here with me are, for one reason or another, not, although their possessions, which do so much to conjure up their absence, are here in the rooms and in the attic.

So my answer to the question, what is my shelter today, is, my house. My shelter is my house, the walls of which I can hide behind, while a garden fence and gate mark out my territory, which is backed up by fiscal documents attributing this patch of land to me as a result of a financial exchange: further legal documents state who should own it next, when I am no longer here. In this way we stake our claims to the earth, both to the soil and to the planet. My shelter is my house, and it is also where I have brought my dead.

BIO
Christine Bruce
1959 | Scotland
Lives in the Netherlands

Related Activities

Exhibitions, Together Apart

#1 | SHELTER: results
Artists in dialogue

16.12.20

During 2020, we carried out the first two sessions of Together Apart. The first session took as a conceptual and practical framework the REFUGE and the second, the NEST.

Through those starting points, both of which refer to caring atmospheres and structures for coexistence, we were able to think and create in a wide variety of directions and layers. We reflected on our pandemic context, a situation for which we had to find ourselves in the virtual non-space, but also a situation thanks to which people from many different countries were able to work simultaneously.

Assuming this complex situation, more than 20 participants per session created new pieces –some in exercise format–, took up projects that they had already worked on in the past or collectively set out to create new projects that will continue to develop beyond the scope of our meetings.

Taking these refuge and nest issues also in their complexity, we asked ourselves questions that made each of the participants involve their personal experiences, memory, memories and experiences from each of their territories. We addressed questions that sought to keep us in constant movement; at times we went through very optimistic or pessimistic visions about the possibility or necessity of having a shelter or a nest, and at other times, we were able to articulate more complex visions, enduring in intermediate and liminal states. For both, we took as a theoretical structure of support and dialogue the thought of Félix Guattari presented in The Three Ecologies (1989). His ethical-political approach that highlights the molecular domains of sensitivity, intelligence and desire, as well as his articulation of the three ecological registers (environment, social relations and human subjectivity), helped us to expand our creations and thoughts in relation to shelter and nest.

During the first session, when asked about the conditions that a refuge can have and the conditions that we would like a refuge to have, the artists (coincidentally and by chance, we had a cohort one hundred percent comprised of women) generated sculptural pieces, artists’ books, photographs, videos, dance pieces and more, reflecting on the permeability or isolation structures that a shelter can have. Also, many artists started from their bodily memories to refer to the refuge and made improvisation and performance pieces. We created in relation to the refuge conditions presented by nature and the refuges that we create to protect ourselves from certain natural conditions. Memory as a refuge and shelters for memory also arose through textile practices or from the use of jewelry or objects with which we build links. Finally, the bonds and the community as spaces that shelter and spaces that imply care was another of the axes that we explored through pieces that included readings of texts and sound activations.

Together Apart has functioned as a program that opened up possibilities for meeting and collaborative creation. It has made possible the creation of new rhythms and synchronies for a limited time but whose reverberations and echoes continue to affect in unexpected directions.

Daniela Ruiz Moreno (curator-in-residency)

Proyecto´ace
Artist-in-Residence International Program

View map

International Airport

Ministro Pistarini- Ezeiza (EZE)
Buenos Aires
45' to 60' trip

Domestic Airport

Aeroparque Jorge Newbery
Buenos Aires

Buses

38, 39, 41, 42, 59, 63, 65, 67, 68, 151, 152, 161, 184, 194 and 168 (stop in the front door)

Subway/Metro

D Line (Green)
Olleros Station (4 blocks, 4')

Train

Mitre Line (either to Leon Suarez or Mitre)
Colegiales Station (1 block, 1')

The Latin America's Paris

Buenos Aires is Argentine Republic's capital city. With 15,000,000 inhabitants, it is one of the largest cities in Latin America and one of the 10 most populous urban centers in the world. Its cosmopolitan and urban character vibrates to the rhythm of a great cultural offer that includes monuments, churches, museums, art galleries, opera, music and theaters; squares, parks and gardens with old groves; characteristic neighborhoods; large shopping centers and fairs. Here we also find a very good lodging facilities, with accommodation ranging from hostels to five-star hotels of the main international chains. Buenos Aires also show off about its variety of restaurants with all the cuisines of the world, as well as to have cafes and flower kiosks on every corner.

A neighborhood founded on the Jesuit farms in the 17th century

We are located in Colegiales neighborhood where the tree-lined streets, some of which still have their original cobblestones, invite you to walk. Although the apartment buildings advance, low houses still predominate. It is a district of the city where about 20 TV production companies, design studios, artist workshops and the Rock&Pop radio have been located. The neighborhood also has six squares, one of which pays homage to Mafalda, the Flea Market, shops, restaurants and cafes like its neighboring Barrios de Palermo and Belgrano, with which it limits.

Proyecto´ace
Artist-in-Residence International Program

Open Call #1
Residencies 2025
Deadline 
January 31st, 2025

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